I saw a drag show two days ago. It was part of the “anniversary” of the nursing department. They also had a dance, played soccer and musical chairs, and hazed new students by making them crawl through mud in an orange plastic tube with a sign that said something like intestinal parasites. Just one more reason Bolivia kicks USA's ass. The annual celebration in the POLS department at UWRF was a wiener roast followed by a lackluster volleyball game.

I mentioned something about cross-dressing before in this blog. I hate to come back to it but it’s an interesting part of the culture. First of all I should say it’s really popular, street performers do it, it’s on TV, and the students have featured it a few times before. Mostly it’s done for comic value, after all can you think of anything funnier than a spiky haired guy in clip-on earrings and a skirt, who looks all too comfortable in heels and makes most of the girls jealous of his legs as he’s being chased around by either a big breasted cowboy or a “man” with a permanent marker beard wearing a suit that only half hides shapely hips as he grabs his crotch and walks so shoulder heavy you’d think his spine was fused.

I don’t know much about psychology but I’m pretty sure there is interesting research about sexual outlets for men in super macho countries, which would probably have something intelligent to say about why being left by your girlfriend can be seen as just lacking control over her but wearing fake boobs and lipstick is cool.

Anyway, Sister Jean doesn’t like it and won’t go, she says it’s sexist and disrespectful to women. Maybe shes right, but the girls cross dressed too and did their best to make macho guys look like tools, for whatever reason this never gets as much of a reaction and it is definitely viewed as just a supplement to the real action.

Yesterday Sam and I became the first semi-pro English speaking radio advertising icons in the Coroico area, or so we were told. One of our old students has a restaurant and thought there was an untapped English speaking market that he could corner by putting out an ad in their native language. I don’t know if it’s true or not but we’ll see. There are certainly plenty of English speaking tourists that come through here. We were paid with a few glasses of cold beer, made more RICO because we drank them at about 10:00 am.

We showed up with no script, no reservations, and no idea what was going on. In about 15 min we had written and recorded in two takes what will be the vocal track for a heavily produced typical Latin ad - Lots of sound effects, fast crazy music in the background, and at least one incredibly obnoxious voice (MINE!).

Okay, that’s all

LOVE

andy